Saturday, August 26, 2017

Nemesis – Atrocity Unleashed

North Carolina’s Nemesis has been around
for more than a few years now, but only just put out their debut record earlier
this year. All signs point to thrash with “Atrocity Unleashed”, and that is
exactly what Nemesis delivers. If you don’t stretch out your neck before
listening to this record, you’ll feel some pain at the end of this 35 minute
journey. Nemesis subscribes to the hyperfast style of thrash. Think Sadus,
Fastkill, or later Attomica and you’ll know what to expect from this band. It’s
one of those albums where the drums feel like they’re racing ahead of the rest
of the band simply because of how fast they’re playing. Of course, the band is
always perfectly in time, but many of these songs are a spastic cacophony of
high velocity riffs. To Nemesis’ credit, they don’t only play fast; there are a
lot of more crushing sections that feel like transitions between the band’s speedier
moments.

One of the best things about Nemesis is
that they are a pure thrash band. That might seem like an obvious statement,
but these guys keep things far more old-school than many of their peers. There
are no death metal or black metal vocals, no blast beats, or even anything that
sounds like it was invented after 1987 (ok, the blast beats one isn’t quite true, but
they’re used sparingly). I like all of those things, but it gets tiring after a
while. For this reason, it is refreshing to hear Nemesis take a more
traditional thrashing approach. The occasional interjection of high-pitched
screams is also welcome, especially because Nemesis’ singer clearly has no idea
what he’s doing, resulting in these moments being much more hilarious than if
he could actually hit the notes.

Often times, bands that take extreme
approaches tend to be unmemorable, relying on their gimmick rather than their
songwriting. Fortunately, that isn’t the case for Nemesis. A number of these
songs are very memorable, with the highlights including “Nemesis”, “Blades of
Death”, and “Psycho Surgeon”. The last of these three tracks is one of the
slightly different sounding Nemesis songs. Its main riff is (comparatively)
slower, and more groove based. It’s still completely crushing, but in a
different way. It isn’t long before the band hits their old tempos, but the
distinctive opening riff makes “Psycho Surgeon” a standout effort.

There isn’t much room to criticize
“Atrocity Unleashed”. It doesn’t have a great production (the drums in
particular could sound more organic), but given the sound quality of certain
classics in this style, Nemesis is by no means lagging behind. Other than this,
it’s easy to appreciate the album. The more thrash I hear with death metal
vocals, the more I crave a band like Nemesis, and their commitment to all
things 80s is a huge part of what makes them so great! For this reason, Nemesis’
“Atrocity Unleashed” is one of the most essential thrash releases of the last
decade!